Stop Optimising Yourself to Death: Daoism for the Digitally Exhausted



8 min read

You have ticked every box on society’s list. And yet, you have never felt more lost.

In this post, we explore what the Daoist text Zhuangzi reveals about why relentless self-improvement is quietly hollowing you out — and how the story of Hundun and practice of zuowang offer a more humane way to live.


We were told to optimise everything.

Optimise your CV. Optimise your mornings. Optimise your body. Optimise your personal brand.

Somewhere along the way, many of us internalised standards we never consciously chose. We inherited them, from school systems, corporate culture, social media, even well-meaning parents, and we mistook them for reality itself.

Two thousand years ago, a Daoist text Zhuangzi saw this problem with startling clarity. The answer was not better optimisation. It was something far more radical: emptying the mind. 

Let’s explore what that means and why it may be exactly what our generation needs.

The Pain of Living Inside Borrowed Standards

You are not simply tired. You are suffering from what we might call Stolen Air, suffocated by values and standards you absorbed but never examined. 

Here is what that looks like in 2026.

The Cult of Achievement

You have spent years climbing the ladder, finally landing that senior role. Your LinkedIn profile gleams with “impact” and “strategic delivery.” 

Yet you feel hollow. You have mastered everyone else’s metrics while losing the ability to measure your own contentment.

Curated Moral Identity

You vet every Instagram post to ensure your “ethical consumerism” is visible, like the reusable cup, the charity run, the capsule wardrobe. 

You are not living your values; you are performing them for a jury of anonymous followers. The exhaustion is real.

Productivity Guilt

Your Saturday morning is no longer for rest; it is for “optimised recovery.” You track REM sleep on a wearable, rush to a 6 a.m. bootcamp, and consume productivity podcasts at double speed. 

Even your leisure has become labour. Another box to tick for self-improvement.

Identity Fragmentation

Scrolling through a school friend’s curated holiday photos, you feel a sharp pang of inadequacy. 

Your identity splinters into competing “judges”, like the careerist, the homeowner, the wellness devotee, each one whispering that you simply do not measure up.

Two passages in the Zhuangzi are especially powerful for our moment: the story of Hundun and the practice of zuowang: “sitting and forgetting.”

The Daoist Warning: The Story of Hundun

The parable of Hundun (Zhuangzi 7.15) is Zhuangzi’s most subversive fable. 

Think of it as a two-thousand-year-old takedown of Silicon Valley optimisation culture.

The ruler of the southern sea was named Shu (Brief); the ruler of the northern sea was named Hu (Sudden); and the ruler of the central region was called Hundun (Chaos). 

Shu and Hu would occasionally meet in Hundun’s domain, where Hundun always received them with great kindness. 

Wishing to repay his goodness, they said among themselves: “All people possess seven openings through which they see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Hundun alone has none. Let’s make some for him.” 

So each day they bored one hole into him. After seven days, Hundun was dead.

Hundun is celebrated as a generous, benevolent host. His lack of physical sensory orifices—the "holes" common to humans—serves as a metaphor for his untouched, primordial state.

This suggests a life lived in perfect alignment with dao, completely free from the artificial constraints, measurements, and social constructs of humanity.

The tragedy mirrors our own. Shu and Hu are well-intentioned. They genuinely believe they are helping. 

In 2026, they are your boss giving you a new KPI framework, your wellness influencer prescribing a five-step morning routine, your friend suggesting you “just need to get your personal brand sorted.”

Each “improvement” bores another hole into you:

  • You “improve” your body until you hate it.
  • You “improve” your productivity until you burn out.
  • You “improve” your children until they lose curiosity.
  • You “improve” yourself straight into anxiety.

You are Hundun. Society is Shu and Hu. 

They think they are being kind. But in trying to make you conform to their standards, they are destroying something essential.

Zhuangzi’s warning is clear: not all improvement is life-giving. Some standards, once internalised, suffocate your natural vitality. 

The Zhuangzian question is not “Does this meet society’s definition of success?” but: “Does this accord with my own nature and circumstances?” 

This dissolves much of the comparison anxiety. There is no universal ladder — only different expressions of life.

Identify one source of noise, like a specific influencer, a LinkedIn “thought leader,” a WhatsApp group, that makes you feel you need to change who you are. 

Mute it. Protect your chaos from their order.

Ancient Wisdom, Applied

If Shu and Hu are the personification of Hustle Culture, Hundun is the original antidote. 

Here is how to apply the “no-holes” philosophy as a survival strategy for modern life.

1. Cure for the Cult of Achievement: The “Un-Upgradable” Self

The Cult of Achievement treats you like software that needs constant updates. Shu and Hu thought Hundun was “broken” because he was “incomplete.”

  • The Insight: Your worth is not a project to be completed.
  • Practical Tip: Adopt a “Zero-ROI Hobby.” Choose an activity, like pottery, birdwatching, doodling, and strictly forbid yourself from monetising it, tracking it on an app, or even getting good at it. 
  • When someone asks “What’s the goal?”, your answer is: “To just do it.”
  • The Hundun Move: Resist every urge to “bore a hole” (i.e., attach a metric) into your joy.

2. Cure for Curated Moral Identity: The “Faceless” Virtue

We feel compelled to project a specific “brand” of goodness — the sustainable traveller, the mindful worker, the socially conscious consumer.

  • The Insight: True virtue (de) is internal and “muddled”; it does not need a profile picture.
  • Practical Tip: The “Ghost Mode” good deed. Perform an act of kindness and tell absolutely no one.
  • The Hundun Move: By not “opening the hole” of external validation, you keep that moral energy inside, where it actually transforms your character rather than leaking out as a performance.

3. Cure for Productivity Guilt: The Non-Linear Day

Hustle culture wants to bore seven holes into your day: one for the 5 a.m. workout, one for deep work, one for networking, and so on.

  • The Insight: Rigid structure eventually kills the living element of the person.
  • Practical Tip: Schedule a “Chaos Block.” Put a one-hour slot in your calendar called “Hundun Time.” No plan. No phone. 
  • Follow your innate disposition: if you want to nap, nap; if you want to stare at a tree, stare.
  • The Hundun Move: You are protecting your primordial state from the tyrannical logic of your Google Calendar.

4. Cure for Identity Fragmentation: “Muddled Wholeness”

Social media forces you to fragment yourself into “tiles”: your career tile, your relationship tile, your fitness tile. You then compare your career tile to someone else’s highlight reel.

  • The Insight: You are a “muddled” whole, not a collection of separate performance metrics.
  • Practical Tip: The Identity Detox. For one week, stop introducing yourself with labels that start with “I am a [job title]” or “I am a [lifestyle category].” Notice how much lighter you feel.
  • The Hundun Move: When you stop defining yourself by external “holes,” the comparison trap dissolves. There is no yardstick that can measure a Chaos that has no edges.

The Daoist Cure: Sitting and Forgetting

The Zhuangzian cure for the overwhelmed modern mind is to empty your heart and mind through zuowang, which is “sitting and forgetting.” 

This is illustrated in an imaginary conversation between Confucius and his disciple Yan Hui (Zhuangzi 6.53–6.56):

Yan Hui said: “I’ve let go of Humanity and Duty.” 

Confucius said: “Not bad, but you haven’t reached it yet.” 

Later, Yan Hui said: “I’ve forgotten about ritual and music.” 

Confucius said: “That’s better, but you’re still not there.” 

Later still, Yan Hui said: “I simply sit and forget.” 

Startled, Confucius asked what that meant. 

Yan Hui replied: “I let my body and senses fall away, discard awareness and intellect, and merge with the vast transformation of all things.” 

Confucius said: “You are truly a sage! Please accept me as your student.”

Zhuangzi subverts tradition by making Confucius the student. The radical move is zuowang — not merely rejecting social rituals, but undergoing a total inner transformation. 

By figuratively shedding his body and senses, Yan Hui dissolves the ego and aligns with his innate disposition (dao). Zhuangzi doesn't reject virtue itself, but rather the artificial, top-down morality imposed by systems. 

Ultimately, Yan Hui’s transformation models a return to a natural state, free from the rigid "yardsticks" of human contrivance.

Think of your mind as a cluttered flat. Most mindfulness apps tell you to “organise” the clutter. Zhuangzi tells you to throw the furniture out the window.

To “forget” in the Zhuangzian sense means:

  • Forget rigid categories of success and failure.
  • Forget the compulsive need to judge and be judged.
  • Forget the self-image you must constantly defend.
  • Forget the narratives you inherited but never examined.

When the mind empties of borrowed standards, it becomes responsive rather than reactive. 

The corporate lawyer realises she can practise law without deriving her entire identity from prestige. The content creator learns to create without obsessively refreshing analytics.

Emptying the mind does not mean withdrawing from the world. It means engaging without being imprisoned by artificial distinctions. 

When you empty rigid judgements, you become less brittle. You can admit uncertainty. You can evolve publicly. You can disagree without self-annihilation.

Ancient Wisdom, Applied

To a digitally fatigued millennial, Yan Hui’s zuowang is not about literal amnesia. It is a System Restore for a brain fried by modern performance culture: the practice of unplugging from the artificial metrics we use to define our worth. 

Here is how zuowang acts as a cure for your specific pain points:

1. The Antidote to the Cult of Achievement: “De-Skilling” the Soul

The Cult of Achievement tells you that you are the sum of your LinkedIn endorsements.

  • The Pain Point: The constant pressure to stack skills and achievements.
  • The Yan Hui Cure: Zuowang means forgetting your “Human Capital.” In this state, you are not a Senior Manager or a Founder; you are a biological entity in flow.
  • Practical Tip: Spend time on a hobby like painting, hiking, cooking, and intentionally do it badly or without a goal. Forget the need for a result. Reclaim the joy of the process itself.

2. Cure for Curated Moral Identity: Radical Authenticity

We perform virtue through activism, aesthetics, lifestyle choices, to signal our goodness to the digital tribe.

  • The Pain Point: The exhaustion of maintaining a “correct” public image.
  • The Yan Hui Cure: Yan Hui “forgets humanity and righteousness” not because he becomes callous, but because he stops performing them.
  • Practical Tip: A Digital Sabbath: stop posting your good deeds or your aesthetic life for one full day each week. 
  • When you stop documenting your virtue for an audience, being a good person starts to feel natural rather than performative.

3. Dissolving Productivity Guilt: The Un-Optimised Hour

Hustle culture views every second as a resource to be mined.

  • The Pain Point: The internalised boss that makes you feel guilty for resting.
  • The Yan Hui Cure: Yan Hui “sloughs off his limbs and trunk” and “dismisses his intelligence.” He stops treating his body and mind as tools for production.
  • Practical Tip: Practise aimless wandering: sit without a meditation app, a timer, or a biohacking goal. Forget the clock and align with the dao’s timing, which is never in a rush.

4. Healing Identity Fragmentation: Beyond Distinction

Social media fragments you into tags and niches, forcing you to compare your metrics about followers, salary, appearance with others.

  • The Pain Point: Feeling like a fragmented collection of data points that never quite measure up.
  • The Yan Hui Cure: Confucius notes that Yan Hui is “beyond distinction and constancy.” He has stopped using human yardsticks to measure his life.
  • Practical Tip: Intentionally spend a weekend "incognito." Engage in activities where no one knows your job title, your follower count, or your "aesthetic." 
  • You forget the hierarchy of better or worse, and return to your own unique, muddled wholeness.

Final Thoughts

Emptying the mind is frightening. Without imposed standards, who are you?

Zhuangzi would smile at the question.

You are not a brand. Not a CV. Not a moral performance. Not a productivity machine.

You are something more like Hundun: dynamic, uncarved, alive.

We are exhausted not because we are weak, but because we are over-shaped. Perhaps the most radical act available to you right now is not self-improvement.

It is sitting quietly long enough to remember what has not yet been drilled away.

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